Jason Zander is Corporate Vice President for the Visual Studio team in the Developer Division at Microsoft. Learn more about Jason.
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Today we’re giving a “sneak peek” into the upcoming beta release of Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5. Soma has announced on his blog that the beta will be released on February 29th! We look forward to seeing what you will build with the release, and will be including a “Go Live” license with the beta, so that it can be used in production environments.
Visual Studio 11 Beta features a clean, professional developer experience. These improvements were brought about through a thoughtful reduction of the user interface, and a simplification of common developer workflows. They were also based upon insights gathered by our user experience research team. I think you will find it both easier to discover and navigate code, as well as search assets in this streamlined environment. For more information, please visit the Visual Studio team blog.
In preparation for the beta, today we’re also announcing the Visual Studio 11 Beta product lineup, which will be available for download next week. You can learn about these products on the Visual Studio product website. One new addition you will notice is Team Foundation Server Express Beta, which is free collaboration software that we’re making available for small teams. Please see Brian Harry’s blog for the complete announcement and more details on this new product.
In the Visual Studio 11 release, we’re providing a continuous flow of value, allowing teams to use agile processes, and gather feedback early and often. Storyboarding and Feedback Manager enable development teams to react rapidly to change, allowing stakeholder requirements to be captured and traced throughout the entire delivery cycle. Visual Studio 11 also introduces support for teams working together in the DevOps cycle. IntelliTrace in production allows teams to debug issues that occur on production servers, which is a key capability for software teams delivering services.
I encourage you to view the presspass story with additional footage from today’s news events, including a highlight video and product screenshots. Then stay tuned for an in-depth overview of the release with the general availability announcement on February 29th.
Enjoy!
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Will you merge all different versions of Visual Studio in 1 ISO, so that i can decide which version i want to install and it would be better to handle just version. Like the Office and Windows team already did. Chose during install and the key would decide.
best regards and i can't wait to try this release out
Hi,
Why windows title are in uppercase, like SERVER EXPLORER, TOOLBOX, etc?
@Carl: Regarding the titling on tool windows, the origin for the All Caps titles was to provide a way to give structure/shape to tool windows without the need for line work. In VS 11, wherever possible, we've used typography and whitespace to creater structure and emphasis in the user interface. That said, we're hearing the mixed feedback on the All Caps titling, and we'll continue to monitor it.
Will there be an option to choose different themes?
Gosh this is ugly, it looks like it's Visual Studio for Windows 3.11 (but WORSE).
Visual Studio 2010 looks really good, VS11 Dev Preview looks even better, but this.. I hope VS is extensible enough to bring back VS2010 look back with an extension.
Looking Good!
I don't see "additional footage from today's news events" or "a highlight video" on the PressPass page. I was looking forward to that, too.
Regarding all cap titles, I tend to know where to go by muscle memory, not by reading. The uppercase titles do stand out more to me but more like they're screaming. I'd prefer they stand out a lot less, like when they are lowercase. Lowercase feels more refined to me as well.
@VS_User - thanks for regards, we can't wait to hear your feedback! Our installation process will be very similar to what we shipped with VS2010 with some updated UI and under the covers work. Thanks for the suggestion on how you'd like to see things in the future
@Donatas - there is indeed theme support. Built in is Light and Dark mode. I've actually been using dark mode internally for months and I love it. There is a lot of additional material on the new user experience on the VS Team Blog (blogs.msdn.com/.../introducing-the-new-developer-experience.aspx).
@techSage - stay tuned, we did a recording this morning for members of the press and the studio has been cranking through the encoding. You should see things fill in as the day goes on.
I don't like being negative, but this is one of the /ugliest/ UIs I have ever soon. You guys did such a wonderful job on VS 2010, and now we are moving to monochrome mess?
The light theme looks terrible, the dark theme looks a bit better. Maybe it will look better once I get it installed. Who knows.
I know there is a push to adopt Metro style, but this look's TOO reductionist.
Please lose the All Caps in the UI. Your UI experts should know that all caps reduces the shape contrast, making the text harder to comprehend at a glance.
uxmovement.com/.../all-caps-hard-for-users-to-read
Where have all the colors gone?? The UI has taken a BIG step backward into the 1990's! This makes me want to cry! :-(
I'm really looking forward to VS11 as there's so many great things coming up like async, and loads of great new features in the Entity Framework.
However, I have to say I'm *really* disappointed with the IDE theme changes. All that grey is terribly depressing. Please bring back the colour icons, there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. I can't believe anyone has actually been calling out for these kinds of changes to the IDE that we've seen.
Have to agree when the general consensus here in that the UI theme is possibly one of the worst I have ever seen since Windows 3.1 days.
I have to agree, that grey theme is very depressing and the ALLCAPS titles looks awful.